Mobile, remotely controlled robots are becoming increasingly popular for use by the military, SWAT units, and police and fire departments. They typically can include an arm with an end effecter, several cameras, several antennas, and a deployable mast. Frequently the end effector is a gripper, e.g. a pair of jaws that can be opened and closed on command to grasp objects such as debris, hazardous material, unexploded ordinance and the like. The larger robots even have the capability to grip an injured, downed, person by some personal paraphernalia such as a shirt collar and drag them out of harm's way to safety. Often these end effectors, cameras, tools and other devices may be mounted on an arm, typically articulated, with two or more arms, an upper arm and a lower arm, for example. In emergency or combat situations it is often necessary to collapse or extend the arm(s) by hand for loading and transport or deployment, respectively. With smaller less powerful mobile robots their arms may be manually manipulated by back-driving the drive motors. But in larger more powerful mobile robots the force required to manually extend or collapse the arm(s) by back-driving the motors is quite large and so may not be done as quickly as needed and may require more than average strength.